The Brother, the Boy, and the Shoe || B. Barnes

Tinkerbell

It didn't take long for Allie to become popular on the base. She found that the other nurses were frequently inviting her out to the local town or spending their free evenings sitting around her bunk. It was a new feeling for her. It wasn't as if she didn't have any girl friends back in Brooklyn. She did. The only problem was that the only real bond she had was with Rebecca, which in turn meant that they didn't have too many nights to themselves with Bucky and Steve lurking around at one family home or the either.

Here, she was able to spend time speaking and not worrying about a boy or a man walking in and the topic having to change. She wasn't being interrupted by a man who wanted to argue about one thing or another.

And yet, despite that freedom that she found she had been craving and was excited to experience, the reality of what was happening every day on the base was not lost on her. There were already images that she feared she would never erase from her mind. There were already the thoughts of soldiers that she knew weren't going home that followed her each day.

Those thoughts constantly caused her to think of both Bucky and Steve. Where were the two? Were they safe? Were they unharmed? Would they all return to Brooklyn so that life could go back to some semblance of normal? 

On one rainy autumn evening, Allie sat on her cot under the warmth of her blanket. Her bunkmates, Mary and Louise came in having just finished working in the hospital tent for the second portion of the day. They looked over at Allie with smiles as they took in the sight of her looking through a book of some kind.

"What do you have there?" Mary grinned as she unpinned the cap from her hair.

"Just the albums my friend snuck into my bag that had my books in it," Allie rolled her eyes with a laugh. "I'm looking through pictures of my family and friends."

"Really?" Louise asked. "You said you had an older brother, right?" 

"I appreciate the enthusiasm Lou, I really do," Allie teased. "But my brother is the kind to sputter at the idea of a woman even remotely thinking of him."

Louise simply sat down next to Allie on her cot as she unpinned her own cap and let down her hair, massaging her scalp as she looked at the album that sat on her friend's lap. The current page was filled with images of the older Barnes siblings and the Rogers siblings sitting together at an afternoon picnic. Allie could vaguely remember the day, mostly due to the fact that it was one of the only times she could remember that she wasn't ready to kill Bucky. 

"Oh, who's this?" Louise pointed at Bucky.

"James. The most annoying man you'll ever meet," Allie rolled her eyes.

"Is he?" Mary walked over and joined the two. Looking over onto the page at the man Louise was pointing at, Mary simply smirked. "I wouldn't mind if he annoyed me."

Allie simply rolled her eyes. Flipping to another page, Allie felt homesick. She wouldn't have cared if they were at the Rogers family home or if they had been at the Barnes family home. The familiarity of Brooklyn was something that she craved. Sighing at the page, she opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted.

"Girls!" a voice rang out as a set of footsteps pounded against the ground outside of their bunk. All three looked up and to the flap that acted as the door when another young nurse from the base tore into the bunk. She was drenched from the rain and clutched a paper tightly in her hand. "Look who's going to be making a stop here at our basecamp."

"Who?" Allie looked over at her watching as the woman quickly made her way over. 

"Captain America," the nurse seemed to swoon. "Look."